Outdoorsman LED

Malkoff or something else...

I'll just get it out of the way, I have not been impressed with the performance of any of my LED lights in the outdoors. I may have gotten spoiled by the incans in my collection, but they just don't throw the way I want them to.

That said I have a nice 3D Mag with 4C's crammed in it, A UCL and a Terralux 3-6 Cell drop in in it. It is not bright enough for me.

So would I be better off getting a $75 drop in for this light, or getting somthing else? (Tiablo. MRV, Cree Projector, P60 Drop-In, ect...)

The Malkoff should work outdoors with the 4C cells.

Or if you just want a totally new light, go for the Tiablo A8 for 18650 battery and A9 for CR123 battery(A8 Cree Q5 version, I've heard they throw further then the Malkoffdevices) for quality or the Cree Projection and modify it with a Q5 if you want to stay spend less.

Incandescents also have better color renditioning then LEDs so things might seem clearer faraway with an incan.

I have been real happy with the performance of my cheap $10-25 River Rock 2xAA light outside at night camping, working, etc. Look for a lens to get throw. Reflectors and multiple LED's just don't work. The physics is all wrong. A reflector is a parabolic mirror to reflect a point source light into a beam. The light that escapes hitting the reflector makes the "spill". Incandescent bulbs are nearly a point source but even then the filament and misalignment throws odd patterns into the beam. LED's throw most of their light out in a wide pattern. You can keep throwing more LED's and batteries at the problem with itty-bitty lenses in front of them to try to get brighter and brighter but it all gets down to; -no lens, no throw.

:devil:

I'm no expert, but with incandescents it's more efficient to use the reflector to shape the beam versus a lense. Are LED different enough this changes?

DougM

An incandescent throws out energy/light in all directions (360°) so most of the light hits the reflector except what "spills" out the front without hitting the reflector. A small amount also hits the base inside the bulb which is usually white and reflects. An LED throws out most of it's energy/light towards the front (180°) and there is an emission pattern on top of that in LEDs because of the packaging etc so very little hits the reflector to be focused into a beam. A lens placed in front of an LED where most of the output hits it is ideally suited for gathering the LED output and focusing it into a beam.

More LED info is available here on CPF or here are the basics:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-emitting_diodes